


A Spiraling Kind of Love

by Wolverinequeen1



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: And a monster lover, Body Horror, Bugs, Canon Divergence where Gerry says Fuck No to working for the Archives, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Fuck Canon, Gerry is a monsterfucker baby!, Hurt/Comfort, It/its/him/his pronouns for Michael, M/M, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Michael pronouns vary by chapter with no regard for consistency, Opposed Forces to Lovers, Other, Sometimes I fuck with the lore a bit and thats okay, Touch-Starved, i don’t know her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28357938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolverinequeen1/pseuds/Wolverinequeen1
Summary: Gerry was good at his job. He kept it simple. No strings, no distractions.The Distortion taking a special interest in him? That was one major distraction.(In which Gerry tries to mind his own business and be a reluctant hero but monsters sometimes get in the way unexpectedly.)
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 28
Kudos: 101





	1. A Technicolor Vacation

God, he hadn’t meant to get involved this time. He was on vacation for fuck’s sake, and he had already saved some poor girl’s life (Probably. He wasn’t actually sure how that had turned out). And he just wanted a break from the powers for once.

But now some idiot was jabbering away on his phone in Italian, not paying attention to where he was heading. Gerry only happened to glance up from his own walk back to his hotel to see the man heading unawares toward a door that was a bright and cheerful yellow, set into the steel and brick modern building. Now that was suspicious. But the fact that he could feel the itching, paranormal drive to open that door had him moving to intercept the man.

The idiot saw his approach out of the corner of his eye and sped up nervously. Gerry knew he often had that effect on people - it was part of the allure of his style choices - despite the fact that he was wearing his vacation top today, which meant a truly hideous Hawaiian shirt, the pattern a clashing mix of color.

The man hurriedly reached for the handle of the door as Gerry ran right into him, pushing both of them away from the door and into the side of the building. The man started saying something angrily in Italian, but something cut him short and he blanched before turning and bolting.

_Fuck_.

Gerry whirled on his heel to see the door was cracked, and coming around the corner of it was a long, long, bony hand. He backed up a few steps as the door slowly creaked open and someone - something - stepped through. Despite the outline, this creature clearly was no human. It was tall enough that it stooped to get through the door, though the movement didn’t look right. It looked like a predator’s crouch as it stretched out to its full height in the waning daylight, its mane of long curling blonde hair catching the light like glass. The limbs seemed to bend and move at unnatural angles, its hands were - god. Its hands and fingers were impossibly long and narrowed to points like knives. Gerry’s instincts were alarm bells blaring in his head, warning him that no matter how sharp those points looked, they were much, much sharper.

Gerry looked up at the creature that had stepped through the door, trying not to betray a hint of the fear that was coursing through him. Or, he tried to look at the creature. It was so difficult to focus. Shapes and patterns swirled in the fabric of the being’s yellow shirt, the same color as the door behind it. Or was it the same? It kept shifting. Its edges blurred and moved so it looked like a glitch, so he tried to focus on its face. There was no set color to its eyes, as they seemed a kaleidoscope of color, and it had a wide, wide smile. Those teeth had the same sharp quality as its hands, despite their apparent bluntness, and Gerry had to suppress a shudder as he eyed it in the most nonchalant way he could.

“Can I help you?” he asked, trying to ignore those damn alarm bells.

The creature’s smile widened and giggled very slightly. The sound echoed around him and set his teeth on edge. “It seems you’ve cost me a meal,” it said.

“Yeah, well, I’m a more difficult bone to swallow, so don’t try any shit,” he said, his voice as hard as he could make it.

This time the creature threw its head back and laughed, the horrible reverberating sound bouncing around his skull and making him wince.

“I don’t doubt it,” it said when its laughter had dwindled to a chuckle here or there. “The Archivist’s toys are made to stick in one’s throat,” it said, and its smile widened even further, if possible, exposing so many of those sharp-not-sharp teeth.

That caught Gerry off guard. “The Archivis- Gertrude? I’m not one of her people or her toys” he snapped. “I don’t even work for the Institute.”

The creature shifted, and Gerry couldn’t tell if it made a step closer or not. “You’re marked by The Beholding all the same,” it said, in a voice streaked through with mocking pity.

Gerry flexed his fist, and the eye tattoos stood out in sharp relief against the white of his knuckles. He bit out a humorless laugh. “Well it doesn’t have me yet,” he said, then looked up at the creature. “The Spiral can’t have me either,” he said firmly. It made sense this was a creature of the Spiral. The swirling confusion, the hint of madness to this whole exchange? Yep, Spiral alright. “Plus, I’m on vacation,” he said, and gestured down at his shirt.

The creature made yet another head splitting laugh. “Yes, you make quite the contradictory spectacle.” Gerry supposed that was true. The studded boots, black jeans, eyeliner, etc, with the fun addition of the most dizzying pattern he’d ever worn on a shirt. Somehow it made perfect sense that he would be wearing a shirt like this when he came into contact with a creature of madness. He looked up from his distracting thought to see the creature fixated on the shirt as well, its kaleidoscope eyes seeming to swirl.

“What are you?” Gerry asked, his voice quiet. The creature was unlike pretty much any servant of the entities he had encountered, and he did not like the way that his brain seemed to swirl in its presence. Curiosity had always got him into more problems than he would like to admit. Too often, the _need_ to know had put him a tight spot.

The creature smiled. “A what, yes, that is more correct. I am everything and nothing, shattered truth and fractaled creation. An endless well and a labyrinth made whole,” it said, and its voice echoed in Gerry’s skull, whispering and pulling.

“Yeah, I kinda got the ties to the Spiral a little earlier,” Gerry said, trying to ignore the pull of those swirling eyes. He had a feeling that if he looked too deep and too long he might lose it. “But like, what are you called?” he asked, hoping the research into whatever horrible title it had would give him clues to keep it at bay.

The creature shifted back slightly and its smile turned less predatory, and more - well he actually couldn’t tell what the hell it was, but he no longer felt like he was about to be sliced into easy-to-eat ribbons. “I am called many things across many lifetimes. Lies, Delusion, _Distortion_. But… you may call me Michael,” it said, as if it had made up its mind about something.

Gerry almost snorted. “Your name is Michael?” he asked in disbelief. There was no way this eldritch horror was named something as mundane as Michael.

Michael shook his head. Was that amusement on its face? Probably. “It is a name you might use,” it said, and turned around toward the door.

Before it disappeared through, it turned back with a pointed look at the clashing patterns and colors that decorated the shirt he wore. “Enjoy your vacation,” it said, and smiled that too-wide smile.

Gerry watched it go, then looked down at the shirt that he was most definitely going to burn when he got home. “ _Shit_.”


	2. A Shifting Plague

It didn't appear again until after his vacation was over. He had spent the rest of his time in Italy paranoid, keeping an eye out for any doors that looked unusual, any people that didn't look quite right. But there was nothing. Just endless crowds of regular, ordinary looking people.

Once he got back home to London and he had burned that vacation shirt, he started to see its doors again. They didn't always look the same, but he could usually tell which of the doors they were. There was something not quite right about them; some kind of pull and push, some kind of swirling pattern to them. It depended on the door really, but it was always something just a little bit wrong. He ignored them when he could but every so often he found his gaze drawn to them in a way that he couldn't explain and definitely didn't like. He didn't need another monster trying to kill him. Not when he had more Lietners to hunt down and burn, and especially not now that The Desolation and it's damn little cult was still so pissed about him destroying their Lietner (sacred text, unholy words of a dread god, _blah blah blah_ ).

But hell, were they angry. He had to be so careful about making his way back to his flat, making sure he wasn’t followed. They had nearly burned down a motel he was staying at while tracking down a lead in Manchester.

So now his paranoia was dialed up to an 11. And he definitely didn't need a spiral monster following him around.

But that's just what it did. Follow him. Just doors in places they shouldn't be and this weird itching, uneasy, falling, spiraling, dizzy feeling he got ever so often, just when he thought he could get calm. It was like it - Michael, he thought with irritation and no small measure of curiosity (Michael was too ordinary a name. What did it mean that a monster was named Michael? Did it used to be something closer to human?) - was watching. Like it was waiting for him to relax only to tickle him with the knowledge that it was watching and making his paranoia edge ever closer to the madness the Spiral thrived on.

So Gerry did what he was hard-wired to do after years of living with his mother. He did the opposite of what was expected of him. He forced himself to calm the spike of anxiety that coursed through him when he saw the doors and what he knew lurked behind them. He kept his guard up of course, kept an eye out, but he forced himself to appear as relaxed as possible. No random asshole stalker was going to make him already crazier than he already was. So, he ignored the doors as best he could.

He ignored the doors that were outside of the library, on the sides of liquor stores, across the street from his flat, in the halls of bars, never with any predictably. These were meant for him to see, as they were always the golden yellow with the swirling pattern he was coming to really, really hate.

He once even threw a water balloon filled with black paint at one, Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones blasting his hearing to shit in his headphones. The song suddenly went in and out of focus, interspersed with echoing manic laughter and the tune of We All Live in a Yellow Submarine. Gerry let out a sharp bark of laughter before shaking his head and walking away. _Fine. Be like that._

This went on for a few weeks, until Gerry was almost used to it. But ‘used to it’ is exactly the kind of thing that makes it easy to catch you off guard.

He wasn’t even thinking about doors now, as his feet pounded the asphalt and he ran like his life depended on it, because of course, it did. The horrible skittering noise behind him was too loud as thousands of bugs poured down the hallways after him. _Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_ was his only thought as he turned another corner. He was too far from the exit. How had he been so stupid?

He had turned up at the warehouse with a flimsy lead on a Leitner with sure ties to the Corruption, and he had gotten the Corruption alright. But they were waiting for him.

One of the three women had held out the book to him, and he took one step forward before the alarm bells started ringing loudly in his head. The smell had reached him and he flinched back just as the flanking women had exploded into masses of shiny black bugs, and they started pouring out of the cracks in the walls and the grates on the floor. The woman holding the book had started to laugh and laugh as the insects crawled out of her eyes and nose and then Gerry was running and running and god, he was lost in this ugly warehouse and he was going to be eaten alive by bugs.

He rounded a corner and saw at the very end of the hall, a steel door with a frosted pane of glass letting light in. Finally, a door out of this goddamn place. He ran as fast as he could, the sound of legs all around him and his breathing tearing his throat. He flung the door open and slammed it behind him as fast as he could.

He took a second to glance around, trying to catch his breath. This wasn’t outside. This didn’t even look like the same building. Technicolor carpet and yellow swirling wallpaper coated the hallway all the way out to what looked like a funhouse mirror right before a turn in the hallway.

Oh no.

Gerry turned to face the door he came from, but he could faintly see the legions of bugs crawling over the frosted glass window and decided he would take his chances with the hallway. _I mean, Michael hasn’t killed me yet,_ he thought, then headed down the hall, whipping out his switchblade just in case as he stalked down the corridor.

He made his way to the funhouse mirror and touched his reflection gently with his blade. An echoing, earsplitting laugh made him jump, and not six feet away was Michael.

God he was hard to look at here. Outside, in the real world, he had been a dizzying headache. In here, he was a concussion. He was tall and lanky and his joints bent wrong - if he even had joints. His head was bent at an angle that would have meant a broken neck for anyone else, and his eyes were swirling pits of color. His mouth was smiling and full of sharp teeth, and his hands were bent like freakish claws. His entire body flickered and buzzed and swirled, making it hard to define his outline. Gerry wanted to sit down for a second, but he blinked and tried not to focus on any one part of Michael, and especially not on the pounding in his head and the cotton feeling in his mouth.

Instead of trying to run, like every instinct screamed at him to do, he leaned against a wall, nonchalant.

“Thanks for the door,” he said, and was mildly surprised that he meant it.

Michael’s wide grin got wider. “Are you? Are you certain that this won’t be a worse fate than The Crawling Rot?”

Gerry shrugged. “I mean, at the very least it won’t be as predictable a death,” he said, with an indifference he did not feel. If he could keep it talking, or at the very least interested, he could figure something out.

Michael seemed to perk up at his comment. “That is true,” it said, and giggled again. Gerry winced. “Now what did you do to enrage The Crawling Rot like that?” It asked.

“Well I was gonna burn a Leitner belonging to it and apparently it didn’t like that idea. Plus servants of the entities usually have it out for me. Kind of expected.”

Michael eyed him at this. “Expected,” almost to itself. It was silent for a moment. “You work alone and haven’t been torn apart yet,” it mused. “Interesting.” It flickered forward like a flame. Only a little closer (Gerry was still out of reach at least) and yet Gerry could feel the crackle of what felt like electricity over his skin.

Gerry nodded. “Yeah, I rejected a number of job offers from the Institute. Whatever information they have isn’t worth being fully claimed by the Eye or the death toll they rack up at that place,” he said, a tinge of old anger lighting in his chest. “I did a little research.”

Michael threw back his head and laughed, and it echoed around the halls and boomed through Gerry’s brain. He pitched into the wall of the corridor, trying to stay on his feet, but even the walls beat in time with Michael’s laughter.

When Michael looked at him again, his eyes were impossibly bright. “Oh I do like you” it said cheerfully, and gestured one of its long, long arms at a door that hadn’t been beside Gerry a moment ago. “I’ll be seeing you,” came an echoing promise as Gerry stumbled out of the doors and into his own flat, nearly tripping onto his bed. When he turned to look, the door was gone.


	3. Lose Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rescue attempt

Gerry was almost growing tired of having to save idiots from themselves. It was like they couldn’t even be bothered to look around and realize that there was some supernatural monster trying to eat them.

Okay fine, to be fair, most people didn’t have any idea, and he _did_ want a world where no one had to even think about monsters eating them, but damn it, he was tired and pretty drunk and the last thing he wanted to do was be a hero again.

But here he was, walking (okay, okay, mostly stumbling) back to the motel he was staying at, when he saw a blonde man heading for one of those goddamn yellow doors again. Michael wasn’t about to have a meal right in front of him, that asshole.

So before he really could think it through, he was charging at the blonde man as he reached for the door. He wasn’t super coordinated at the moment, so he simply rammed into him to slam him against a wall and more importantly, away from that door.

As soon as his body made contact, Gerry realized he had made a terrible mistake. Something was very wrong with the body he had slammed into. It was too dense and heavy to be a regular body, and it was pointed in the wrong places. More than that, his body began to tingle all over and he could feel the hairs rising on the back of his neck as his already swimming vision really began to act up. _Oh no._

Faster than he thought possible, the blonde man had grabbed him bodily and switched their places with an inhuman snarl, and now Gerry was pinned to the wall by his wrists. _Oh shit._

The man, who was tall enough that Gerry had to tilt his head to meet his eyes, had soft looking blonde hair and a sweet face, but something was just off enough that it made Gerry very afraid to be this close. When the anger creasing his face relaxed slightly and he laughed dizzyingly, Gerry realized that somehow, Michael was able to look very human indeed.

_Oh fuck._

“That was rude,” he said, his slight laughter making Gerry’s head pound.

Gerry’s mouth was very dry and it took him a few seconds to say anything at all. “I thought you were trying to eat, well you,” he choked out.

“I know what you believed. I was curious about what you would do,” it said. “I did not expect you to try and attack me, so thank you for that lovely surprise, Gerard Keay.”

His mother used to scream his full name at him when she had found out about some small act of rebellion. When she caught him, still shrieking his name, the result was always bad.

“Don’t call me that,” he said with a vehemence that surprised even himself. “Thats what my fucking mother used to call me.” He could almost hear her voice now, raised in a rage that was sure to leave him with more scars to call his own. He shuddered slightly.

Michael tilted its head. “Used to?” It asked softly, curiously, hungrily.

Damn, was he really drunk enough to start a conversation with a monster about his mom? Absolutely.

Gerry shook his head, trying to rid himself of the sick feeling her memory brought up. “Yeah, used to. Until the day she decided to try immortality and flayed the skin off her back. I came home and she wanted me to fucking help her. You believe that?” He said, his voice cracking at the last word.

God he could remember coming home and seeing her like that, on the floor, so much blood, so much blood everywhere. She asked him to finish it and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. So he said nothing, just turned around and walked away, her screams and curses echoing in his ears as his body shook uncontrollably. He was swept up in the memory, the terror, the despair, until he realized that Michael had begun to press against him, the hunger in his eyes unmistakeable. It could feel some part of the fear, feed on it, he realized, and that was enough to snap him out of his past.

“That's not cool, asshole,” he snarled, trying to wrench himself free. It didn’t work, but Michael did move back slightly, and looked almost ashamed. No, monsters couldn’t feel ashamed. Probably just embarrassed it had been caught.

“My apologies,” it said, its face twisting back into a smile again, the moment's tension gone. “What shall I call you instead? Not-Archivist, The Surprise, Lunch?” It said, and laughed.

“Gerry is fine,” he said, anger draining out of him. He was pretty sure Michael wouldn’t eat him, but it was better to not have it call him Lunch.

Now that the anger was gone, he realized his head was pretty foggy. He definitely shouldn’t have been drinking that much. He looked up at Michael, who looked down at him. Gerry was suddenly very aware that it had been a very long time since he had been this close to anyone. The last time was, well he was almost stabbed to death that time, so this was a vast improvement. And Michael’s eyes were swirling right now. Deeper and deeper and deeper until Gerry wasn’t paying attention to much of anything. He was falling down a well, losing touch of feeling in his body and... _was this what madness felt like?_ he wondered distantly.

He didn’t realize he had been staring too long until Michael blinked and let his wrists go. “Alright Gerry,” it said, and Gerry snapped back to his body with a nearly violent jolt. “Be careful heading back to the motel. The fiery cultists await you two blocks down.”

“I-what? The Cult of the Lightless Flame?” He asked, but Michael was already stepping through its door with a brisk wave.

 _Dick_ , he thought, then heaved a deep sigh. Not really. Michael did warn him about a murderous cult, and even if he served the Spiral and thrived off lies, it was better to be safe and find a cab to take him in the opposite direction of his motel for now.

Gerry rubbed his wrists, frowning at the soreness. He wished his head wasn’t still so foggy with booze, then he would be better able to clear his head of the feeling of another body pressing against his own, even if it was a monster.


	4. Intangible Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gerry experiences kindness.

After that event, Michael, not his doors, showed up around Gerry more frequently. He spotted him in his more human form sitting at a coffeeshop, watching him with a faint smile. Gerry flipped him off and Michael’s smile grew.

He showed up occasionally when he was checking a lead about a Leitner, sometimes to watch, sometimes to be a cryptic dick, and once even to point out the dead body of his contact in a warehouse dumpster. But it was always very alarming to have him show up unexpectedly, especially unexpectedly in his home.  
Gerry was buried in more research about The Slaughter. He hadn’t slept well the night before, nightmares jolting him awake yet again. His mother, her back flayed open, advancing on him with a bloodied knife, promises of immortality pouring from cracked and bleeding lips. He had crawled out of bed, soaked in sweat, and stumbled into the shower, before settling down to do research at 4:30 AM.

He heard the door creak open behind him and stood up so fast that his chair hit the ground, flinging open his switchblade and getting ready for a fight. He was greeted with echoing, dizzying laughter.

“Oh, you’ll need more than that to kill me, little one,” Michael said, looking down at Gerry with a smile. He looked less than human today.

“Oh fuck right off,” Gerry snapped. “Just cause you’re freakishly tall,” he muttered, and lowered his knife. He probably wouldn’t be able to kill Michael with a knife like that. He’d probably need a shotgun. Or C4.

Michael laughed again, and walked (really it looked more like a prowl) over to his desk. It raised an eyebrow. “The Slaughter,” it read from his notes, and glanced over at Gerry curiously.

“Yeah, there have been rumors of a Leitner outside the city, ties to The Slaughter. Problem is, there have been rumors of people serving it or impacted by it or whatever, and there have been a lot. So if I’m gonna find it and destroy it, I’m gonna need to be more prepared,” he said, gesturing at his notes. He didn’t necessarily want Michael here, but if he was gonna hang around… well, Gerry hadn’t had anyone to bounce ideas off in a long, long time. And to be honest, his voice was getting a bit rusty. You can only talk to yourself for so long, and he definitely wasn’t about to drive over an hour to a storage locker to pick up a certain skin book for a good ol’ chat.

“The Slaughter,” Michael mused, his voice echoing in that peculiar way of his. “You do jump from entity to entity. Have you enraged all of them yet?”

Gerry actually laughed. “I mean. Yes? Any entity who I haven’t personally pissed off is more than willing to punish me for my mother's actions, so I have one hell of a target on my back.”

He sat down and leafed through his notes until he found the article he had been looking for. A merry band of killers strikes again. “Yeah, there have been packs roaming around,” he said, and held out the article for Michael to take.

Michael reached for the paper underhand, and grazed the back of Gerry’s hand with his own. The contact was small, the grazing of skin on almost-skin, and not unpleasant, but Gerry flinched back hard in preparation for pain. But it wasn’t the fact that the creature before him had knives for hands that made him jump. It was the memory of his mother, still heavy on his mind from his nightmare, that crushed down on him, preparing him for any number of injuries she would rain on him in her rages. He waited for the burn, cut, slap, crush, any flavor of pain but instead, the silence weighed down on the room as Michael stared at him curiously.

“I - uh - sorry - shit.” He stumbled over his words, trying to calm himself out of the goddamn nightmare he slipped into for just the briefest of moments.

“So yeah, the agents of The Slaughter might be using the book to aid them, or the people are getting turned into killers cause of the book, but either way, I’m burning that shit,” he said, trying to return to the topic and stop Michael from staring at him with curiosity and something else... no. That wasn’t it. Monsters didn’t feel pity, he tried to remind himself. But the reminder felt hollow.

Michael finally looked away and glanced at the paper. “Burning it would be wise. But agents of The Slaughter rarely deal in wisdom. They are all of them teeth and pain and steel,” he said, in a sing-song voice.

Gerry leaned back in his chair. “Yep, and I’m bringing some tools to take care of that,” he said, and his smile was genuine and wolf-like.

Michael took in that smile and returned it with bright eyes. “That sounds like fun, Gerry,” it said, and laughed and laughed and laughed. Gerry joined in for a moment, shaking his head slightly.

His stomach growled loudly and he stood, stretching, and Michael followed suit, copying his actions. Gerry wondered idly if it even needed to stretch its muscles. If he even had muscles to stretch.

He left Michael in the living room and went to turn on the coffee pot. He was standing there, waiting, when there was a gentle pressure on his head and tracing its way through his hair. He flinched and spun around and found Michael there, close.

Too close.

He was trapped between a counter and a tall monster and it was - stroking his hair. And that was his last cognizant thought before he was lost in the gentle sensation of touch, and his brain short-circuited.

He didn’t know how long they stood there, Gerry with his eyes half closed, leaning into a gentleness he couldn’t remember having felt in years, maybe ever.

Michael's movements were slow and gentle and repetitive, a gentle static buzzing emanating from him and his outline shifted and swirled in multiple colors. Time didn’t exist for them; the only thing that existed was a soft and gentle touch.

The whistle of the coffee pot broke their reverie and Michael stepped back, allowing Gerry to flee. He didn’t though. He just stood there, trying to not feel crushed at the loss of touch, trying to rationalize _why_ he wanted to get closer to Michael and see if it would touch him again and again and again. God, his head felt like it was full of cotton balls and static electricity.

He swallowed once, twice, and turned around to fix a cup of coffee, telling himself the shake in his hands was just because he was caffeine deprived. He turned around to check on Michael, but he was gone, and Gerry stood alone in an empty kitchen with a cup of coffee and a confused ache in his chest.


	5. A Long Way To Fall

When Michael visited now, touches became more frequent and no less debilitating. They would brush shoulders as they passed in an alleyway, or touch hands in a coffeeshop or Michael would run one hand down Gerry’s back as he researched, casually, as though on accident. And each and every time, Gerry’s entire brain blanked and he shuddered. And he wanted Michael to do it again and again and again.

It was becoming difficult to focus on his research. When Michael was there, Gerry’s entire body was on edge, aching for it to lean in closer and hating himself for wanting. He had spent the majority of his life with his head clear and free of most ties with other people, now shouldn’t be any different. But even when Michael wasn’t there, Gerry found himself thinking about where it might be. He wasn’t fucking daydreaming, okay, but whatever his brain was doing was distracting.

But that's not to say he was completely useless. He noted with some satisfaction that he was seeing a pattern. Victims had been turning up on the outskirts of the city, marking a roughly circular pattern around a cluster of storage spaces. It was damn suspicious for there to be storage spaces on a lonely road outside of London, so he figured that would be a good place to start.

He examined his notes. The police reports seemed pretty set on there being multiple killers. Deep lacerations were mentioned in each of the reports, mutilating (and in one case nearly severing) the torsos of the victims. Gerry winced slightly as his imagination brought the image up, rather unhelpfully.

There were no suspects yet, but plenty of missing persons reports were tied to it. Given the rap sheets littered with violent crimes for more than one of those missing persons, Gerry was figured that a few of them had probably banded together under the siren call of The Slaughter and decided to go on a killing spree.

Gerry rubbed his eyes. God, he was exhausted. It had been over thirty-six hours since he had slept. Not a record of his by any means, but his nerves were shot. He didn’t remember lying his head down and he certainly didn’t remember closing his eyes but it wasn’t long before he was asleep.

_He was standing with his back pushed against a counter (or was it a wall?), kept in place by a very irritating Spiral being. It didn’t press closer or farther apart, just. Kept him. Something inside him surged, and he shoved it away from him, like he should have done when he was pinned there the first time._

_But it simply laughed, and the sound didn’t hurt his head, but it made him ache with - rage. Yeah, rage was something he knew how to handle, it was easy. Easier to think about than the tangle of feeling in his head._

_He shoved it again and this time its expression flickered from amusement to irritation and its blunt teeth seemed to get sharper. It was Gerry’s turn to smile. It was good to see it get unbalanced, if even for a moment._

_He pushed it backwards a final time and now suddenly it was his turn to press it against a wall. It seemed surprised that he was able to do that and didn’t move. He reached up to touch its curling blonde hair and it was soft and warm and moved like it was alive. And it let out a soft sigh at the touch._

_Gerry’s whole body stiffened at the soft sound. Before he knew it, he was leaning up and up and up and touching their lips together softly, tentatively._

_The kiss started soft and warm, and it seemed to melt into his body just so. He ran a free hand through the mane of hair and was rewarded by lips, even more insistent on his own. He smiled and ran his other hand down its chest, skimming light and carefree and - oh._

_Fast as lightning, he was pinned to the wall and Michael looked at him hungrily and pressed against him like it had before, danger and electricity on the air. This time Gerry leaned into it, and their lips met again, hungrily, desperate, all teeth and tongue and eager and desperate for more -_

A loud clatter made him fall out of his seat, looking around wildly for the source of the noise. He heaved a sigh as he realized that his books had slid off his desk as he moved around in his sleep… _Fuck_.

The dream returned to him like being hit in the face with a wet sock and he sagged back to the floor. There was no way in hell he had a dream like that, especially not one about the monster who stalked him around the city and ate people in doors.

Gerry stumbled to his feet and headed for the bathroom. Damn it, he couldn’t be doing this stupid dreamy shit, especially not about something that could tear him limb from limb.

He stopped to lean his head against the cool mirror, berating himself for letting it get to this point. _Monster, you dumb bastard_ , he thought, but his heart wasn’t really in it. _He called you Lunch_ , he thought, but his brain was focused on the feeling of his wrists pinned to a wall as Michael pressed against him.

He shook his head violently and splashed his face with water before stepping into the hall.

“Idiot, moron, stupid, stupid, ass,” he muttered, then stopped short as he saw Michael standing in the hall with a smile on his face, as usual. It held a slip of paper in its hands. (He was looking pretty passably human. At least Gerry could look at his features without the threat of headache).

“I hope those weren’t for me,” it said, cocking its head. “I would hate to be tied down by a theme.”

Gerry choked out a laugh, trying to bury the surge of panic. “Got something for me?” He gestured toward the slip of paper in Michael’s hand.

Michael took a step forward, his shirt changing its shade of blue. It made his hair look more blonde and catch in the ligh- _no you stupid dumb idiot asshole_ , he thought furiously and took the paper from Michael without looking up to its face.

It was an article about another attack that looked like it had been poorly cut from a newspaper. Probably with knife-like fingers. This article didn’t go into detail about the condition of the body, but Gerry had seen enough victims of The Slaughter to know what they were leaving out.

“With this location added to our other ones, we can definitively pinpoint a base of operations. Often these events take place around a central point,” he explained as he gestured for Michael to follow him to the living room, where he set up a map of the area, the location of each disappearance poked with a pushpin. He went to go and grab pushpins to mark the new sites and found the pins arranged in a neat little spiral. Gerry stifled a smile and glanced over at Michael, who was looking at the map instead.

Gerry grabbed one of the pins and put them in place. He took a step back and examined the name of the storage facility. A place to explore with weapons at the ready. He grinned.

He turned to Michael, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with him, looking at him with a kind of curiosity and excitement and eagerness. He had a feeling that when he went to check those warehouses, it would be keeping an eye out for him.

And then Gerry couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking down at its mouth. He knew its teeth were sharp despite its human mask, and his brain buzzed slightly with that knowledge, with the danger so close and yet, so distant.

He wanted to know if that mouth grazed his throat, if it would feel sharp and electric or warm and comforting. He wanted to know, and he had never been good at ignoring the craving for knowledge.

He just wanted to know.

His hand snaked over to Michael’s jaw and he pulled him in for a kiss. He didn’t know what he expected, but Michael’s soft gasp and the warm-cold-sharp-soft-bright-colored-lights-behind-his-eyes-tingling feeling was not it at all - and it only lasted a second until the current of electricity zapped through him and he was hurled back against his couch.

“Ow, Michael what the hell?” he said, noticing with mild alarm that his shirt was slightly singed and there was a sound of static in the air.

Michael no longer looked passably human like he had moments ago. His shape was blurred and flickering and his hair was a wild mane of curling and twisting, like it had a life of its own. Colors and shapes warred on its clothing, each trying to make the overall image more dizzying. The big sharp hands were back, and sharp as ever. If Gerry focused (which hurt like hell), he could see a face in the churning technicolor madness, and it was twisted with what could have been shock and longing and apology.

“Oh,” was all it said for a moment, the air filled with the sound of slightly labored breathing. Gerry couldn’t tell if it was his or Michael’s.

Its shape started to settle slightly (it stopped flashing and churning so quickly) but neither of them moved. “That was unintentional,” it said, and what passed for a face showed the same remorse that colored it voice. “Apologies.”

They stayed like that for a few more moments before Michael stepped forward and offered a hand down. Gerry did not take it, on account of the knife-like quality they possessed. A shudder passed through Michael’s body and the knife-like hands dulled and solidified more, until Gerry took one and pulled himself up.

Gerry had to tilt his head even more to look up into Michael’s almost-face. Being this close was dizzying, and he could feel his hair raising on the back of his neck. He didn’t look remotely human this time, with his oddly bending limbs and the hands it kept trying to keep dull but it was barely working.

They were still very close, and even being accidentally zapped was not enough to dull the longing in his chest. He could definitely tell now that the heavy breathing was coming from Michael as it stared at him with swirling, technicolor eyes.

They stayed like that for a few more minutes, neither wanting to break the stillness between them, just. Looking at each other with less than an arms length between them.

Finally it was Michael who broke the stillness, and he slowly raised a non-sharp hand up to Gerry’s face and gently stroked his cheek, letting his hand trail down his neck and settling on his collarbone, where he traced the line with a soft hum.

Gerry’s brain had pretty much short-circuited immediately at the contact and he leaned into it, closing his eyes. It was an indescribable mix of sensation, to have Michael touch him like this. Warm and cold, tingling and soothing, and oh god he wanted to kiss it again.

He exhaled heavily when Michael drew back his hand. He opened his eyes to see Michael’s face, and then it turned and opened a bright yellow door, and disappeared through it.

It took every survival instinct Gerry had not to follow. He leaned heavily against a wall and slumped to the floor.

_Damn it._

But he touched a hand to his lips and smiled anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gerry and Michael bite off a bit more than they can chew
> 
> Cw: Graphic depictions of violence
> 
> (Let me know if there are other content warnings I should include)

He glanced over at the duffel bag he had at the ready. Two shotguns, two canteens filled with gasoline, a few big knives, plenty of ammunition, and a handgun. Maybe overkill, but he wasn’t in the mood for any close calls. He was going in prepared.

He hadn’t actually asked Michael if it wanted to come. He had handled worse on his own before. But somehow he suspected that it would be coming along anyway, or at least watching.

It had been visiting more often. These past few days had been especially tough, and Gerry worked early into the morning, research piled high around him. But Michael would come and wander around his house, or sit on the couch and watch static on the TV, or lean close over Gerry’s shoulder to read his research. It was these times, late at night, that he would stroke Gerry’s hair, and Gerry would lean away from his research and close his eyes, basking in the gentle sensation. He felt warm, and he felt safe.

Gerry laughed himself out of the memory and pulled out a cigarette. “Safe,” he muttered. “Safe with a monster at my side.”

He really should be pushing back from this. He should tell Michel to leave his head alone and stay out of his flat. He was getting soft, he thought, and the voice echoing through his head sounded an awful lot like his mothers. Soft and easy to rip apart, it crooned, and he flinched, trying to clear his head.

Michael had all the opportunities it needed to tear him into bite sized strips and never had. Hell, he had wandered into the corridors it called home (or was it just an extension of its form?) and hadn’t dissolved into madness. _So fuck off mom_ , he thought viciously, and stood. He had work to do, and books to burn.

Time to get to work.

He stared up at the storage facility, alone out here at the end of a dirt road. There was no one in the parking lot, and it seemed to be abandoned. With his luck, absolutely not abandoned. _Probably crawling with murderous maniacs actually!_ And though the thought was grim, Gerry smiled.

The windows were boarded up, and there was a loose chain around the double doored entrance. He remembered the last house he’d entered with windows boarded up to block out the light. That had been with considerably fewer weapons and considerably fewer scars too. A phantom pain tingled down his side. The Dark was not an entity to be taken lightly.

Gerry hefted the duffel bag onto his shoulder and headed for the doors. And what do you know? He had some trusty bolt cutters in that bag. Almost like it wasn’t his first ride straight into hell.

The chains broke easily enough and slid down as Gerry stood. He felt ready. Gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, knife strapped to his thigh, to his hip, to his chest. Bigger guns and gasoline in the bag. Go time.

He wandered in, staying quiet and blending into the gloom rather nicely with his black ensemble. He stowed the bag away near the door in a dark alcove he hoped he would be able to reach and brought one of the shotguns with him.

He hadn’t made it far before he stumbled upon a lone man, crouched in the dark with a big fucking knife, carving long jagged lines into - _oh shit, was that a person?_ The body on the ground was long dead but the man kept carving into them like he was drawing. Gerry fought the bile in his throat and drew the knife at his thigh.

He moved quickly, and the man was dying before he could make a sound. God, Gerry hated this part. Killing was so much harder than burning shit. But his mom had raised him well, right? He knew what to cut to make someone bleed out fast and quiet.

He moved stealthily through the storage space, and had taken down another psycho carving lines with a huge knife, this time into themselves. _God, what the fuck,_ he thought, then looked up to see three people standing at the end of the building, staring right at him with wide smiles. “Goddamn it,” he snarled, and drew his handgun, firing at the one in the middle. He dropped, but the other two disappeared behind the tall avenues of wooden crates.

He couldn’t see the other two, but he could hear them. They were laughing loudly, like hyenas. Gerry spun around at movement in the corner of his eye and fired once, but nothing fell. All at once, the animalistic laughter stopped and Gerry’s gut dropped.

His heart was pounding in his ears and suddenly, he Knew, he knew that one of them was leaping from a crate at his back, knife raised. He whipped around and fired twice, and the woman fell dead at his feet.

There was a creaking sound to his left, and he spun to see Michael a little ways away, staring with curiosity at the man impaled on his knife-like hands. The man dangled a little off the ground, and let out a gurgling snarl before his head lolled limply to the side and he too, was dead. Michael let him fall and turned to Gerry with a smile.

“Hey Michael, I was wondering if you were gonna bother showing. Didn’t want to bore you with multiple killers,” he drawled, trying to shove down the bright feeling that rose in his chest at the sight of the tall blonde creature moving closer.

“I can’t be getting predictable, now can I?”it said, and it was Gerry’s turn to smile.

The smile quickly faded as he was brought back to the scene around them. Right. Death and destruction and Lietners. Speaking of which…

“Hey Michael, something was off about those guys. All my research was pointing straight to The Slaughter, but I don’t know. The way those guys were acting felt more like…” he trailed off as he noticed Michael’s eyes slide off him and go wider.

“The Hunt,” it breathed, and Gerry turned around to follow its gaze to the end of the hall. There, standing tall and dark against the cool gray of the walls, was a Beast.

His brain automatically went to werewolf, which wasn’t far off. The creature stood on its hind legs, only slightly shorter than Michael, but definitely broader, with soot grey fur covering its powerfully muscled body. Its hands ended in curved black claws, and its eyes were a burning orange, glowing like embers. Its mouth was open to expose rows and rows of jagged and sharp fangs, and saliva dripped from them, hanging hypnotically. That mouth twisted and it made a sound like laughter, deep and rolling and too humanoid for a creature like that. And its eyes were fastened directly on Gerry.

No weapon he had would kill something like that. God, he wanted to run, but he knew the second he moved that beast would be upon him and rip him into pieces. It looked like it was about to make a move forward, but then something stepped forward and obscured his vision.

Michael. A sound like the scrape of metal on concrete was coming from it as it stepped between Gerry and that beast. Its slender limbs were bending into a predatory crouch and its knife like hands were curved into claws and its teeth were bared, now razor sharp points. And suddenly Gerry was very, very afraid for it.

The beast paused, moving its burning gaze from Gerry to Michael. Gerry could feel the growl it made vibrating in his chest as it bared its teeth. It no longer looked like a cat toying with a broken bird. Now it looked like a grizzly bear facing off with a mountain lion. And then Michael hissed, “ _Run_ ,” and leaped forward like lightning to meet the beast midair. They gripped each other for a terrible moment before they both began to bite and tear and scream and roar and claw.

And Gerry ran. He ran like he couldn’t remember ever running before, but he stopped short of the door. That wasn’t his destination.

He grabbed the fully loaded shotgun out of his duffel bag and ran back the way he came, not sparing a single thought to whether it was the smart call. It was the only call.

He ran back into the room and stopped short. In the moments he had been gone, the room had exploded into carnage. Most of the giant wooden crates were smashed into pieces, and the walls and the floor and the crates were sprayed with blood, both black and scarlet red. In the center of it all, the beast pinned Michael to the floor, its jaws locked into Michael’s shoulder. Its burning eyes had been clawed away and one of its arms was only a ragged stump, but it was still pinning him, its remaining clawed hand clenched around Michael’s throat in a vice. Michael’s knife hands were clawing at the underbelly of the beast, but his movements were slowing and his body was beginning to convulse.

That was all Gerry needed to see before he planted the muzzle of the gun inches from the beast’s head and pulled the trigger.

The side of the beast’s head seemed to explode, and Gerry didn’t wait for it to turn or fall or do anything at all. He shot it again and again, three more times in the head. Then it fell.

Thankfully it had not landed on Michael. Gerry dropped to his knees beside him, terror coursing through his body as he watched Michael gasp for breath and try and push himself upright. Gerry grasped his uninjured arm and helped pull him into a sitting position.

He looked like shit. Blood (a weird swirling mix of human-red and rainbow that reminded him of an oil spill) matted its hair, poured from its nose, and made its toothy mouth a truly horrifying sight. Puncture wounds bled lightly at its throat, and deep gashes carved their way down its body, shredding clothing and flesh. Gerry was violently reminded of the man who had been carving into the corpse. Mimicking claw marks. Michael’s hands were covered with thick black blood that was also splashed down the rest of its body, and it looked over at the fallen beast.

“It will not stay down forever,” it managed, its voice cracked.

“Can you stand?” Gerry asked, and his voice was calm and even, despite the fact that his entire body was shaking and the adrenaline coursing through him made him nauseous.

Michael tried, and Gerry helped, and in the end, they were kind of standing, with most of Michael leaning against Gerry. He was really fucking heavy, and the hysterical urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of the spectacle seized him, but he choked it down.

“Door to my place,” he said instead. “I’ve got first aid supplies.”

Michael let out a garbled laugh that quickly turned into a soft gasp of pain and Gerry’s chest tightened. It lifted its hand to point to a door with chipped yellow paint and deep claw marks scoured into the wood. It looked like the wounds from the beast had gone deeper than just Michael’s body.

Gerry steeled his nerves and walked willingly through the door of the Distortion.

He had figured he would have to wander some hellish corridors for a while, but the door led straight from the warehouse to his flat. Michael immediately collapsed, and it took all of the strength and adrenaline that Gerry had to drag its long limbed body the few steps to the couch.

He ran to the bathroom and grabbed his entire box of first aid supplies. After pretty much a lifetime of stitching himself up, he had quite a large collection of stuff. He hurried back and grabbed big scissors from the box, and turned to Michael, whose bloodied body was limp, his eyes closed.

Panic seized Gerry violently and he fought back the choking feeling that rose in his throat. He took a ragged gasp to steady himself as he noticed that Michael’s hair was still moving feebly. As far as signs of life went, he would have preferred more, but it would have to do.

He took the scissors and cut open Michael’s technicolor shirt. He realized with a jolt that it might have been part of him, like skin, but Michael didn’t move, and it seemed like fabric, so he pulled it open to examine the deep claw marks in Michael’s chest. The claw marks ran down his ribs and across his stomach, marring the pale flesh that was patterned with rainbow fractals. He had way too many ribs, and they seemed to poke out only when Gerry touched them, but it could have been a human torso.

The wounds were smoking slightly, a black smoke that smelled like burning hair, and Gerry grabbed the alcohol from the bag. No festering wounds, he thought, and poured the alcohol over them.

The effect was immediate. Michael’s eyes flew open, swirling wildly, and the sound it made was like the scream of car breaks. It lunged without seeing, wrapping its long fingers around Gerry’s throat before he had a chance to move (though what exactly he would have done, he wasn’t sure). It was terrifying really, streaked with blood, its teeth bared and its eyes swirling pools that Gerry knew to avoid looking into. He didn’t know if he would snap out of the well this time if he looked.

Gerry struggled for breath, his hands tapping at Michael’s frantically. He figured the only reason he wasn’t instantly dead was because its wounds had taken a lot of energy out of it.

“Hhmcalll,” he croaked, and that was enough to make Michael snap back to reality and release him.

Gerry sat back on his ass, coughing and touching his throat. There were thin cuts all around it, and blood was beginning to bead up. It would probably bruise too. His ears were still ringing from Michael’s scream and when he touched those, they came away bloody too. Great.

“I’m sorry Gerry,” Michael said, its voice echo-y and pained.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gerry said, his voice hoarse. “Let's get you patched up.”

The stitching was slow work, but when he was done, the deep gashes were nothing more than neat lines across Michael’s torso and thighs. He had cut Michael’s pants into little shorts to give him room to work and to make sure Michael didn’t move too much (the spectacle would have been funny if there wasn’t so much blood), and the entire time he worked, he felt the burning gaze watching him.

When he was finished cleaning the cuts and sewing up the bad ones, his own hands were smeared with Michael’s swirled, multicolored blood.

Michael leaned his head back in exhaustion, and Gerry grabbed some spare blankets from the closet to drape over his impossibly long body, and let him sleep.


End file.
